Galactic Civilizations III Released!

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 6:06 pm

For instance, having trouble figuring out why I can or can't build modules on starbases. I have a starbase with a mining module and can't build econ or research on it. Not sure why.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Dec 19, 2014 8:23 pm

I was going for an alliance victory, and despite having researched it and all the AI races being friendly with me it never showed up as a diplomacy option.

I'm chalking things like that up to the fact that the game isn't quite ready to come out of the oven.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 8:34 pm

Is Impulse still a thing?

I am about to reformat my hard drive and lose four years worth of history, including long-forgotten stored passwords. I can still log into Impulse and see GalCiv2 plus expansions. After I reinstall Windows I'll want to reinstall GC2, presumably through Impulse...how does one retrieve one's Impulse login info? (The program tells me it had an error connecting, failed to update, and then connected fine).

Sometimes I wish that Steam just owned everything. Sure will simplify rebuilding my hard drive.

Stuie · Post by **Stuie** » Thu Jan 15, 2015 10:09 pm

Kraken wrote:Is Impulse still a thing?

I am about to reformat my hard drive and lose four years worth of history, including long-forgotten stored passwords. I can still log into Impulse and see GalCiv2 plus expansions. After I reinstall Windows I'll want to reinstall GC2, presumably through Impulse...how does one retrieve one's Impulse login info? (The program tells me it had an error connecting, failed to update, and then connected fine).

Sometimes I wish that Steam just owned everything. Sure will simplify rebuilding my hard drive.

They got bought by Gamestop. Your games should show up there.

https://impulsestore.gamestop.com/ns/Login

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:41 am

Kraken wrote:Is Impulse still a thing?

I am about to reformat my hard drive and lose four years worth of history, including long-forgotten stored passwords. I can still log into Impulse and see GalCiv2 plus expansions. After I reinstall Windows I'll want to reinstall GC2, presumably through Impulse...how does one retrieve one's Impulse login info? (The program tells me it had an error connecting, failed to update, and then connected fine).

Sometimes I wish that Steam just owned everything. Sure will simplify rebuilding my hard drive.

You should check your Stardock account. If it was registered it should show up there.

http://download.stardock.com

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:09 pm

Island Dog wrote:
Kraken wrote:Is Impulse still a thing?

I am about to reformat my hard drive and lose four years worth of history, including long-forgotten stored passwords. I can still log into Impulse and see GalCiv2 plus expansions. After I reinstall Windows I'll want to reinstall GC2, presumably through Impulse...how does one retrieve one's Impulse login info? (The program tells me it had an error connecting, failed to update, and then connected fine).

Sometimes I wish that Steam just owned everything. Sure will simplify rebuilding my hard drive.
You should check your Stardock account. If it was registered it should show up there.

http://download.stardock.com

Well it seems I do have a Stardock account, but my Impulse games -- namely GC1, GC2 plus expansions -- aren't registered there. I can see them in the Impulse client even though it reports an error logging in (and then logs me in fine).

Tomorrow's my reformat day. Would be nice to be able to reinstall GC2 when I come through the other side.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 1:27 am

This would have been a great time to replay GC2 because Steam got all persnickety about my Windows reinstall and won't let me into my account. Oh well, there's always GoG. Surely they won't let me down.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 8:13 am

Does it think you are on a different computer? If so it should be prompting you for a code they emailed to your associated email. I have done a reinstall of Windows several times and other than Steamguard verifying it's me and not a hacker, I haven't had any issues. If it's not Steamguard, I am not sure what the issue could be.

It's possible you need to reinstall Steam. Just copy the games to a temporary folder, uninstall and reinstall Steam and then copy the games back

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 2:33 pm

IceBear wrote:Does it think you are on a different computer? If so it should be prompting you for a code they emailed to your associated email.

Problem is the email address associated with the account. Either I mistyped it or my ISP is blocking their messages (there's no spam folder so I can't check). I usually only use that account for junk mail because it's so unreliable.

They don't give you the option of having the code sent to a different address or to your phone, so I'm just frozen out. Contacted support (from a reliable email account) last evening and still haven't heard back. I just need them to either change the email address associated with my account or email their damned code to my good address.

...which is, of course, way off topic. I can't play GC2 either because Stardock has no trace of my Impulse titles...so I can play MOO2 for a day or two longer if Steam's going to take their sweet time responding.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 3:14 pm

Send a support ticket over to support and they should be able to help.

http://esupport.stardock.com/index.php?/Tickets/Submit

Also, if you have the keys you might first try registering them to your account.

https://www.stardock.com/accounts/register

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 4:50 pm

I no longer have any trace of my old Impulse games after reformatting my hard drive. I am at the mercy of Stardock support.

I hope they're better than Steam support. 48 hours and no reply to my ticket, with no obvious way to escalate it or contact them by phone. I know it's technically a holiday weekend, but c'mon...MLK Day, really? Who gets that off?

Thanks for your input, IslandDog, I know this isn't exactly a Stardock support thread.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 5:07 pm

It's no problem. They should be able to get you sorted.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:57 pm

Spent some quality time on Beta-3. Really looking forward to the final product.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 4:44 pm

ooooh, looks like the next upgrade is done, just not published yet.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:08 pm

That should be the one with combat.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 12:26 pm

Yep, combat viewer should make its first appearance in beta 4. Should be hitting real soon.

Beta 4 changelog

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 2:12 pm

Something 93 MB just downloaded.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 3:17 pm

Beta 4 is out! Battle viewer, gigantic and immense map sizes, extreme worlds, ideology revamp, and more.

Beta 4 gameplay video

Nightwish · Post by **Nightwish** » Thu Jan 22, 2015 9:50 pm

But, is anything different from 2? How is the game?

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 11:15 am

Do you have an anticipated release date yet?

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 11:32 am

Jeff V wrote:Do you have an anticipated release date yet?

I think they've said they are shooting for April. I'm not sure if that's changed at all.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 12:37 pm

Too bad then, it would be arriving at the tail end of gaming season.

Wish it was done now while wife+baby are exiled out of the country.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Fri Jan 23, 2015 2:50 pm

My hope is that, even without tactical combat, you'll be able to see how ship design and tech focus decisions impact combat.

Just shoving two piles of numbers at each other is kinda dull.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sat Jan 24, 2015 8:31 pm

I can't get over how much better this looks and how much more polish it has over Beta 3. I know we're not supposed to care about those things, but I just fired it up and was wowed by the improvements.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Sat Jan 24, 2015 10:50 pm

Is it fun/interesting now?

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 12:13 am

Pyperkub wrote:Is it fun/interesting now?

tgb wrote:
Jeff V wrote:Do you have an anticipated release date yet?
I think they've said they are shooting for April. I'm not sure if that's changed at all.

It's still in beta...the definition of "un-fun".

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 12:54 am

tgb earlier stated that it was playable but not fun yet. I'm just wondering if that has significantly changed in the past few months/builds.

jztemple2 · Post by **jztemple2** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 1:01 am

Pyperkub wrote:tgb earlier stated that it was playable but not fun yet. I'm just wondering if that has significantly changed in the past few months/builds.

I picked up GCIII over the holidays on sale, but I'm going to wait till release to play. I just can't see myself committing to a long campaign till it's in release state. Just my preference.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 2:40 am

In other news, I'm playing GC2 again and it's still fun.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 5:39 am

I only played a handful of turns to check out the state of the game, but it's certainly more fun that it was.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 12:28 pm

tgb wrote:I can't get over how much better this looks and how much more polish it has over Beta 3. I know we're not supposed to care about those things, but I just fired it up and was wowed by the improvements.

Glad to hear it. There's still plenty to do, but nice to see the improvements being appreciated.

We will have at least one more beta phase left.

AWS260 · Post by **AWS260** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 1:44 pm

tgb wrote:
Fleet Combat Decisions - you will have a little more control on how combat will play out.
Originally posted by Frogboy:
Those who like the idea of designing carriers and seeing carriers in action in fleet battles I think will be happy.

Those who imagine fleet battles that play like MOO2 (i.e. where you're micro managing individual units) will be less happy.

Originally posted by Frogboy:
What you'll have here is if you have support ships in your fleet you'll be able to set up some battle options before the fleet battle begins. its hard to describe, it's a bit magic the gathering (select what you want to do at the start). but you won't be controlling the ships directly. The problem is that people would feel forced to micro manage their battles in order to get an optimal result.

Is this in the current build? How does it work?

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 2:33 pm

I like the new ideology tree and new ideology benefits. I like the concept of the high-value toxic worlds requiring high tech to colonize. Haven't managed to have a battle to watch the battle viewer yet.

Major problem with Beta 4, though: the influence calculation system is borked. This isn't so bad when it's just causing little panhandles and odd pockets of influence. But it is a problem when influence seems to work in reverse, like with a quality-7 warrior planet flipping two high-value influence planets supported by a full culture starbase.

Only just figured out that I have to research a certain number of techs before I can choose within each tech "era," which is why I couldn't get to atmospheric cleansing in the Age of Ascension. From what I can gather, there's a strategy to what techs are best to push into the next era vs. what techs are most useful. As I understand it in terms of era-pushing there are diminishing returns: e.g. a first-level tech has about equal research points (what it costs to get) and tech points (how far it advances you towards the next era), but each tech level has a lower ratio, so higher techs cost a lot for relatively little movement on the scale towards the next era.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 4:33 pm

Mr. Fed wrote:Major problem with Beta 4, though: the influence calculation system is borked. This isn't so bad when it's just causing little panhandles and odd pockets of influence. But it is a problem when influence seems to work in reverse, like with a quality-7 warrior planet flipping two high-value influence planets supported by a full culture starbase.

Yeah, we've seen feedback about that and their looking into it.

There's also a patch being worked on to address some other things that have been reported.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Tue Jan 27, 2015 4:53 pm

Island Dog wrote:
Mr. Fed wrote:Major problem with Beta 4, though: the influence calculation system is borked. This isn't so bad when it's just causing little panhandles and odd pockets of influence. But it is a problem when influence seems to work in reverse, like with a quality-7 warrior planet flipping two high-value influence planets supported by a full culture starbase.
Yeah, we've seen feedback about that and their looking into it.

There's also a patch being worked on to address some other things that have been reported.

It worked out pretty well for the Dregin I was playing against, though. His little planet carved out the heart of my empire.

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 5:55 pm

The savegame I had on a medium map is borked -- tiny enemy planet oddly influencing three of my influence-heavy planets to flip.

Just to see what it is like, I started a game on an immense map. Found a very improbable number of high-value colonizable planets in close proximity. Is that a feature of immense maps?

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 7:38 pm

Mr. Fed wrote:T
Just to see what it is like, I started a game on an immense map. Found a very improbable number of high-value colonizable planets in close proximity. Is that a feature of immense maps?

In GC2 those parameters are customizable at setup. I hope and expect the same to be true in GC3. Maybe it's not implemented yet? I usually play the biggest map with loose clusters, habitable planets uncommon or sometimes random.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 10:32 pm

Kraken wrote:
Mr. Fed wrote:T
Just to see what it is like, I started a game on an immense map. Found a very improbable number of high-value colonizable planets in close proximity. Is that a feature of immense maps?
In GC2 those parameters are customizable at setup. I hope and expect the same to be true in GC3. Maybe it's not implemented yet? I usually play the biggest map with loose clusters, habitable planets uncommon or sometimes random.

I'm playing a large galaxy and the game does indeed allow you to set parameters the way the second did. Setting parameters may not be working correctly just yet. I also found a few Eden-like worlds, but not in my back yard, so to speak. Also the 3 AI races I encountered all had 8 or more colonies to my 3.

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 6:27 pm

We put out patch 1 for beta 4 today which fixes some issues people have been reporting.

Full changelog is here.

Fixes

Fixed a crash where the star system member list became corrupt (this was the most common crash we had reported and it was difficult to track down, thank you to everyone who submitted crash dumps to help us figure this out)
Fixed the Fog of War Miles crash (ie: the immense map crash)
Fixed a repeatable end of turn crash
Fixed a graphical anomaly when scrolling the mousewheel
Fixed an issue that could cause queued improvements not to update if you get the anomaly that finishes production on one of your planets
Fixed a crash in the planets summary window from string length on extreme planet bonuses
Fixed a bug where missiles could come from the origin (the 0,0,0 coordinate) instead of from star bases and shipyards
Fixed an issue where the Diplomacy tech may be unavailable on some tech paths
Fixed an issue where star bases don't heal over time

Updates
Removed the Yor Assembly project (now handled by the fixed duration projects)
Battles automatically starts when the battle viewer opens
Battles fast forward to just before the first shot is fired

AI
Improved Yor AI for building citizens

Island Dog · Post by **Island Dog** » Mon Feb 16, 2015 6:05 pm

Beta 4 patch 2 is available and has lots of fixes, many of which came from player feedback.

Major Crash/Stuck Turn Fixes:

-Fixed a crash within Miles, where too many sounds were being instanced at once.
-Fixed a crash to handle a rare, but valid, case where a fleet is involved in 2 merges.
-Fixed a multi-invasion crash that appeared to the user as a stuck turn.
-Fixed a stuck turn in reference to a constructor moving to a full starbase, the AI no longer stalls at this point.
-Fixed another stuck turn, where the AI was stalling on multi-invasion.
-Fixed an instance where trapping an enemy ship, would stall the game.
-Fixed a stuck turn where 2 fleets attack a defended planet and the second one can't execute the battle.

Fixes:

-Fixed a culture radius oddity(Greatly appreciate the save files in reference to this issue.)
-Fixed the anomaly rewarded survey ships not surveying. (Rest assured the previous pilots have been fired and the ships will now survey as intended.)
-Fixed three instances where ship icons were not being displayed for ships.